I was sipping coffee to fight off the after-lunch lethargy that overcomes one in this weather, listening to the downpour, when a faint tinkle pierced the innumerable patters of rain descending from the roof and rising from the streets below. The bell must have rung several times before I answered the door.
There was a girl, half-standing, half-reclining against the wall, in a wet saree, her matted hair struggling to conceal her face. She seemed startled by the door opening at last. She whispered what sounded like my name and would have collapsed on the floor if I hadn't caught her.
"I want my son!"
They were her first words when she came to. I had made her as snug as I could, administering a mild sedative to give her some much-needed sleep. She hadn't been eating either, and I set out a table, expecting the drug to give her an appetite. She slept through the afternoon into the night. Now, a supporting hand raised to the wall, and the other clasping the side of her head, her face contorted in that preliminary to crying, she stood uncertainly in the dining-space connecting my bedroom and the living room.
"Let me get you something to eat." I jumped off the sofa, and sat her down in a dining-chair.
"I want my son! I want my son!"
After a few ravenous mouthfuls, she stopped eating. She seemed to come to her senses.
"I...I am sorry, sir!" She rose to wash her hands at the sink in the kitchen behind. "I hope you'll forgive me...but I have something very important to discuss. But you don't even know who I am!"
"I know, Lalla Rookh."
I remembered Lalla Rookh, the 'tulip-faced', very well. She wasn't the prettiest student in class, but she was certainly the most graceful and feminine. She wasn't the brightest, either; no, that was Arif Ahmed. Yet while her Bs and Cs added to her humanity, his straight As seemed to subtract from his. Humanity is on an average
between total success and complete failure, and I suppose she had somehow struck that golden mean. Strangely enough, they were lovers. But I remember, after class, she once came up to me.
"Your last lecture on Asoka was — well, it was wonderful!"
I thanked her, awkwardly. She gave me a piece of paper.
"I've written a poem on it, sir. Half-a-poem, anyway. I hope you like it. Maybe some day I'll finish the other half. I just don't seem to have any more ideas right now, sir."
While she was sleeping off that sedative, I went through my old papers, and found it. It was called "The Conversion of Asoka".
The state is born for goodness, out of evil,
And evil is the pain of its birth,
But only where the sun sets, its destruction
Will be a better act than its creation;
But here, in the East, the state is next to the gods,
And I, Beloved-of-the-Gods, Asoka,
Renounce the sword, Kautylyas bequest,
On the blood-soaked, tear-drenched fields of Kalinga.
Now, I thought, why couldn't she put that into prose in her exams? She was simply more intuition than intellect, I supposed.
"You remember me!"
"Come on, there's no use standing. Now, what's this about your son?"
"You're party's got him, sir."
"Mmm-hmm." That answered my question, of course. But I needed time to recover as well as fortify myself for the ordeal ahead. A little diversion wouldn't hurt, I thought. "Stop calling me 'sir'. I'm not your teacher anymore. Call me Zafar."
She smiled, looked down and inspected her fingers. She looked up again, more relaxed. She looked as if somebody had given her two black eyes, for lack of sleep.
Then there was a power failure.
We couldn't see anything until I lit a candle. Without the fan it was unbearably hot, so I had to open the door to the verandah. The sound of rain grew louder. The flame guttered, playing with her shadow on the wall.
She swiftly returned to the subject.
"Nafeez — that's his name — he's joined your party, sir — I mean — Zafar. He's only fifteen — he can't even vote — he has a gun — he collects taxes — that's what he calls them — from shopkeepers — and gives half to your party — and with the other half — he — he — buys drugs — ."
"Yes, I know how the system works, Lalla Rookh. Please don't go on. It's just that I've never seen its effects so close up...."
"You don't need him! Please give him back to me! There are so many others boys you can use — dear God, forgive me! What am I saying! May the Almighty forgive me! But I don't care! He's my son! Let the others go to hell! No, I don't mean that, O Allah! I'm only a weak woman! If only his father...!"
"Lalla Rookh, you've got to listen to me! I have nothing to do with this diabolical students' movement. The only person who can help you is Arif Ahmed."
I was sure that her expression changed, but I couldn't see anything, for a sudden draught blew out the candle. She certainly sobered the moment I mentioned him. For a few moments I could hear only the rain.
Then she gave a low grunt. "Arif Ahmed!" She paused. Again, there was only the sound of rain, relentlessly drenching the hot, humid earth. "The devil takes many forms," she began, very slowly, taking thought, "and he must be one of them. If I have ever met evil face to face, it was yesterday, at his apartment." Her measured speech contrasted uncannily with her previous near-hysteria. "He tried not to let me in, at first. When I started shouting, he had no choice. He asked me what I wanted. I told him."
"'That little bastard of yours,' he said, 'is indispensable to the party. I wonder where he gets his spirit from. What was his father like? Must have been quite a fellow to take you away from me.'"
"Then he started saying nasty things about Nafeez's father and me. I couldn't take it anymore. I grabbed both his feet, and beat my head against them, begging him....He kicked me away. I would have come to you last night, but I had to wait for Nafeez, to see if he would spend the night at home. He didn't. He often doesn't. I waited all day, until I couldn't stand it anymore."
The momentary loss of my most important sense had heightened my imagination. Vividness of detail, when fancied, can be more excruciating than when naked to the eye. I tried to clear the image.
"Where is his father?"
"Abroad. Married. With children."
There was little his father could do even if he were here. A party is a surrogate family, with the leader becoming a father figure. Besides, I felt from her tone that he wasn't interested in Nafeez. She explained.
"I was in love with Arif, as you know. Every girl in my class was in love with him. He didn't have to lie to me to get me into bed. Anyway, he said he'd marry me, and I believed him. He made what use of me he could, then lost interest. I married Nafeez's father, Humayun, mostly to forget Arif. Nafeez was born, and after a few years our marriage broke up. I got a job as a teacher, broke with my own parents, and rented a house."
I had reached a dead-end in our conversation, if it could be called that. She rescued me.
"Why, Zafar? Why has this terrible thing happened to us, to all of us?"
"Because we've sold ourselves. People who sell themselves can have no dignity, no decency, no humanity." Another draught banged the door against the wall, so I had to stop speaking. There was only the darkness, and the rain, and our voices. "Slaves do not even have the right to demand an explanation. They live in an inscrutable universe, which owes them nothing." I went on like this because I wanted her to think. I could tell, more or less, what the outcome of her tragedy would be; I wanted her intellect to triumph over her emotions when the crisis came.
The pitch-black night completely isolated us, like two prisoners in adjacent cells, who could hear, but not see each other. I wanted very much to see what effect, if any, my words were having. We listened to the rain falter.
"We've sold ourselves," she repeated, at last. "Yes! You've made things very clear, Zafar. Now I understand."
When the lights came on again, the voltage had increased, and the fan moved faster than before. I blinked under the glare. But Lalla Rookh stared straight ahead, as though she were still in darkness.
